Davey D: Time's up. Lawrence Frank has to get whacked. State the case otherwise.
Tully

Not my job, Tully. But if you're looking for a Devil's Advocate, I accept. First off, You have to consider that coaching a team half-comprised of children isn't the easiest thing to do nowadays. Even a guy of his temperate disposition has to reach the end of his rope sometimes, convinced that some of these guys are either willfully stupid or have the attention span of eight-year-olds. Second, if the primary goal was to develop these kids this year, he succeeded brilliantly in the case of the point guard and the center. Third, the situation at both forward positions was untenable - not even Dick Motta could turn them into starters. Fourth, it is unlikely that Bruce Ratner is going to pay a guy he likes $4.5 million just to stay home -- no matter how much Brett Yormark might yap in his ear for a more marketable coach (you know, hypothetically) -- though it's always possible that someone else hires him after the Nets grant him permission to skedaddle. Fifth, this season ended as soon as they lost those games at Golden State and L.A. on the last trip - a 2-2 probably would have sustained them until the very end - but the mere fact that he had them in the running for this long is pretty impressive, given that this might be the softest defensive team in the conference outside of Manhattan. As for that last item, does he take the blame for that nightly defensive suckage? Much of it, sure. But management should get its share, because when a one-armed Jarvis Hayes is your best perimeter defender, you've got serious problems. Anyway, we talked about it all at length with Thorn today, and you'll read about it in the AM.

Hey Dave, I realize I'm probably going to sound like a heretic here, but I've developed an impression over the course of the season that a lot (but not all) of the frustrating aspects can be directly traced to Devo, and the fact that the point should not be jacking up bad shots willy-nilly, failing to get teammates involved, and generally regarding defense as optional. He seems like a great kid, but might the braintrust consider this summer his value will be sky high, and pehaps it could land us an All-Star at the 3 or 4; Al Jefferson, Tayshaun Prince, or possibly Igudala? What about Michael Redd and Joe Alexander? Keyon is capable of starting short term, and this year's draft is relatively strong at the point. What say ye?
MJ

Dave: Somebody please teach Harris how to run a team. He is fast and can shoot well once in a while, but his constant dribble-dribble, drive style creates too many lost balls, late passes to teammates, turnovers from wild passes, and, most important, the almost total marginalization of Vince Carter. A banger up front is the Nets' most obvious need, but unless Harris begins to use the others more productively, they will never be a really good team.
John Monaghan

MJ & JM: First off, Devin's not going anywhere. There's a pretty hard and fast rule when it comes to young point guards with a superior talent and a shamelessly reasonable contract - once you've got one, you don't give him up. Sure, once in a while a team can sour on a promising guy (T.J. Ford in Milwaukee, Sebastian Telfair in Portland, Jason Williams in Sacto), but there's usually a good reason for it. But I'd say that most of Devin's shortcomings - as John implies -- are in large part being exposed by his not having the shooters he needs around him. And of course, MJ's right: He has games where he settles for jumpers too much, and he's just not a 3-point threat (yet). But both of you have to consider how good he might be if his two power forwards weren't shooting 38 and 39 percent, or if his starting 3 was a knockdown guy from 20. And consider how effective he would be off penetration if the corner defenders weren't squeezing Brook in the paint as much as they do now off high P/R. Defensively, that's another story. He's routinely awful, he constantly puts the bigs in precarious situations, and it's up to him to commit to it again. He doesn't have to turn into Billups or Deron, but he's gone from one of the best to one of the worst.

Hey Dave, I was at the "game" last night. Just wondering if you know a direct email contact to the Nets front office to voice displeasure?
Dan

Danny: Normally, I'd suggest you carpetbomb the voicemails of people I don't particularly like, but since I can't think of anybody I don't like, I would suggest a strongly worded e-mail to "first initial last name, @ njnets.com." Keep in mind that's likely to get spiked after the first few paragraphs, if you cannot refrain from vulgarity and insolence. In which case, you might as well just drop a comment on this site if you need to vent, because they read it regularly. Minus the vulgarity, that is. Insolence optional.

Hey, Dave: I had only have 1 logical explanation for Yi still starting and being given 20 minutes a night. Frank is under pressure from management to play Yi because of possible merchandising/broadcast deals from China. I cannot see any other logical explanation for Yi getting so many minutes over other deserving players. Can you please sort this one out for me because watching Yi play was frying my brain.
Syed

Syed: If there was any pressure to play the guy, it came from the basketball side, not the business/sales/marketing crew - they'd be laughed out of the room. And we're pretty sure Tim Geithner and the national debt had nothing to do with it. I think the coach honestly believed the kid would snap out of it, and have a decent run of games that would represent a significant growth spurt, then eventually put up a starter's numbers (oops). I surmise that Yi didn't play nearly as much as some others thought he should, and that Dan Fegan expressed that very sentiment to Kiki and Rod....oh, once a week or so. And I also surmise you that even if Rod/Kiki didn't exert explicit pressures on L-Frank to play the kid, he got the message in other ways. As one guy in the room put it the other day, "It's like the Mafia: They expect you to do it their way, and it doesn't have to be verbalized."

Hey Dave: Now that Yi is out of the starting line-up, with Ryan Anderson replacing him, I am still wondering why Josh Boone isn't the power forward next to Brook Lopez. That's something I haven't understood that this whole season actually.
Gerard

G: Coach's blind spot, and it's not entirely cockeyed, to mix a metaphor. Yes, if you put Sean or Josh alongside Brook, you'd get better paint protection. But again, Frank says he doesn't think those two can guard anyone outside of the paint. Two problems with that: Yi and Ryan also have trouble guarding out there -- Yi was learning to move his feet better, and his length was a plus -- and given that they're third from the bottom in defending the 3 anyway, they can't get much worse. But it's not going to happen.

DD: With everyone complaining about how long it took to sit Yi, would it have even made a difference in the playoff race? Ryan Anderson can't change the fact that Chicago plays middle school teams to end the season. Am I wrong to believe that this team just wasn't going to get there this season no matter what?
Ben G.

BG: We'll never know. But when some of us thought it was time to pull the plug - this would be the first week of March, 15 games ago - they were as good as anybody vying for that No. 8 spot. And something even happens to stars when they recognize they're not getting enough help and they're running out of games: They lose their spirit.

Dave: Reading the piece on Gehry himself disclaiming the building of the atlantic yards (and to a larger degree, the Nets' eventually move there), do you in the media share our ground-level fan's perspective that Ratner, in refuting all these claims, is basically the new information minister of Iraq, loudly claiming victory & mass suicide by his country's oppressors as bombs are going off a few yards behind him, and Iraqi forces are openly retreating? On a scale of 1 to 10, how accurate would you rate the idea that the Nets are in the Prudential Center in the next 2 years?
Dave Barrett

David: Thanks. The image of Bruce as Baghdad Bob is something the Home Office has already turned into a new marketing campaign ("Come for the basketball, stay for the sorties"). But as for credibility, let's try to maintain some perspective here: One guy's a businessman, the other one was a 21st century Goebbels. OK, sometimes we can't always tell the difference. But to cut to the chase: I doubt the Nets will consider Prudential (for 10-11) unless something bizarre happens during those three preseason games next October, or they recognize it as a viable place to crash because it can significantly slice their $25-35M annual deficit.

D: The Nets had two starting forwards they let go: Richard Jefferson and Nenad Krstic.
David Wald

David: By now, you know what RJ has to say about it, and I'm a bit surprised it hasn't come up more often this year from the torch-and-pitchfork crowd. But as Oscar Wilde would say, "The less said about life's sores the better." And as Rod Thorn would say, "Don't even mention the name Danny Granger again." Sometimes trades work, sometimes they don't. RJ had to go, but the fact is they're still looking for two starting forwards.

Mr. D'Alessandro: I agreed with your VC critique from a little while ago but I took it hard -- I didn't get how a guy who's 32 (I'm 33) could be too old, done, finished with being capable of carrying a team again like he did in the old days. Final question if you don't mind: When are you on twitter; and I would like my weekend reading assignments daily, if possible.
Francisco J. Garcia, Writing From The Bean

FG: You're not old at 32, you're just different, which is a fact the Nets couldn't adjust to this season. Beyond that, Vince has nothing to apologize for - he's proven his value a million times. But the magnetic strip has worn thin. And you don't want me twittering, because my real strengths are chattering, prattling, and drivelling.

Dave: I seem to recall that a few years back there was this skinny rookie wing from a hotshot college program who had an awkward, funky-looking game and that he sat forgotten at the end of the bench until late in the season, then, given a shot, he came on like gang busters down the stretch and helped his team into the post-season. Any chance CDR is the second coming of Tayshaun Prince?
Doug McCollam

D-Mac: I see very different styles here. Tay's a defender first, which is what he should be with arms that reach past his knees, and he turned himself into a decent scorer. CDR has had a scorer's mentality since preschool, and is years away from being a lockdown defender. Getting off the subject: It's odd how many Tayshaun fans are here on the site - not just today, but regularly. And I wonder how many would remain fans if they remember how he's gone bust in every last-round series he's ever played in - awful in '08 vs. Boston (remember that gag in Game 6, when he was stripped by Posey), horrendous in '07 vs. Cleveland (shot 24 percent), and horrific in the '06 EC Finals against Miami. Nice player, don't get me wrong - he's probably the guy they should have gone after by floating RJ last summer. He's just not a guy you can ever rely on, whereas you know RJ delivers (or is at least accountable) at the moment of truth.

Dave: What is this, so you're an architectural critic now?
Barry in NY

B: Yah, caught some titters from The Perfessor about that, because he's taught me what little I know. But I know this much about Gehry: I'm just not a fan. I also know that architecture should be a guide for the people in and of its time - the way they think and act and see and create -- just like all those straight lines that came out of the early 20th century were truly the language of the modernists. But Gehry? Maybe the experts tell me his stuff reflects the twisted, contorted age we live in, but sorry, it's not like he has to remind me that our world is screwed up. And I'd also like to know why everything he designs looks like it was built from spare parts in an auto graveyard.